Reflections on loosing books

Leaving a book you a reading in a hotel is a pain but it happens. However (rather like toast always landing butter side up) it always seems (at least for me) to be a not-so-good book in an indifferent series when I am only two volumes in. These days I take a risk on Science Fantasy and wait for the full series to be published, buy the first and if that is OK buy the rest and read them in sequence. Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen is the series in question here. The first volume was good (in the good/bad escapist sense of the word) so I bought all nine and got started. Book two had interesting aspects but verged on gratuitous sadism at times. Volume three was proving difficult to read (ie difficult to motivate myself to pick it up) and is somewhere in the Marriott at San Jose (of which more tomorrow); the rest await me at home. I think it was a sub-consious desire to get onto Stephenson’s latest Anathem which I got in Seattle airport and it lives up to Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle will be outstanding.

Incidentally, anyone know why Canadian writers (regardless of quality) are so depressing? And yes I do know about Anne of Green Gables but some things are beyond the pale.